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Tag Archives: Biomass

Being an agricultural country, Vietnam has very good biomass energy potential. Agricultural wastes are most abundant in the Mekong Delta region with approximately 50% of the amount of the whole country and Red River Delta with 15%. Major biomass resources includes rice husk from paddy milling stations, bagasse from sugar factories, coffee husk from coffee processing plants

Salman Zafar‘s insight:

Nearly 40 bagasse-based biomass power plants have been developed with a total designed capacity of 150 MW but they are still unable to connect with the national grid due to current low power prices. Five cogeneration systems selling extra electricity to national grid at average price of 4UScents/kWh.

Germany has been called “the world’s first major renewable energy economy” as the country is one of the world’s most prolific users of renewable energy for power, heating, and transport.

Salman Zafar‘s insight:

Germany is the world’s third largest market for renewable energy investment which totalled $31billion in 2011. Sixty-five percent of investment in Germany was directed toward solar, with 29 percent ($8.5 billion) directed to wind. In addition, 700 MW of biomass capacity was added in 2011

Cogeneration of Bagasse is one of the most attractive and successful energy projects that have already been demonstrated in many Sugarcane producing countries such as Mauritius, Reunion Island, Ind…

Salman Zafar‘s insight:

Most Sugarcane mills around the globe have achieved energy self-sufficiency for the manufacture of raw Sugar and can also generate a small amount of exportable electricity. However, using traditional equipment such as low-pressure boilers and counter-pressure turbo alternators, the level and reliability of electricity production is not sufficient to change the energy balance and attract interest for export to the electric power grid.

Bioenergy usually provides an irreversible mitigation effect by reducing carbon dioxide at source, but it may emit more carbon per unit of energy than fossil fuels unless biomass fuels are produced unsustainably.

Transporting biomass fuel to a power plant is an important aspect of any biomass energy project. Because a number of low moisture fuels can be readily collected and transported to a centralized biomass plant location or aggregated to enhance project size, this opportunity should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Salman Zafar‘s insight:

Transportation is primarily concerned with loading and unloading operation and transferring biomass from pre-processing sites to the main processing plant or biorefinery. Truck transport and for a few cases train transport may be the only modes of transport. Barge and pipeline transport and often train transport involve truck transport.

Germany has become the world’s largest producer of solar power, while diversifying their energy portfolio with large portions of wind and biomass electricity as well. As of 2011, Germany generated roughly 20% of their electricity from non-hydro renewable energy, 8% from wind, 8% from biomass, and 3% from solar. Since then, the country has expanded solar production to account for close to 10% of their average annual electricity needs!

Last week I posted a list of the 5 Countries that produce the most renewable energy. Not suprisingly, the countries on the list tended to be large countries that also consumed the highest amounts of electricity. In fact, three of the countries on the list were also in the top 5 Coal consumers.

While it is definately worth recognizing those countries for increasing the amount of renewable electricity generation in their country and worldwide, I thought (and readers agreed) that we should take a look at which countries produce the largest portion of their electricity from renewable sources. In this way, we can see which countries have invested the most in setting up a sustainable energy future, regardless of size. So, with that I give you the Top 5 Renewable Energy Producer’s by Percentage:

note: This ranking was tough to determine, based on several different sources, with different classifications…

The Palm Oil industry generates large quantity of wastes whose disposal is a challenging task. In the Palm Oil mill, fresh fruit bunches are sterilized after which the oil fruits can be removed from the branches.

Salman Zafar‘s insight:

In a typical Palm Oil plantation, almost 70% of the fresh fruit bunches are turned into wastes in the form of empty fruit bunches, fibers and shells, as well as liquid effluent. These by-products can be converted to value-added products or energy to generate additional profit for the Palm Oil Industry.